Shadows, out for Blood
by sour gummies
Summary: A rogue Liepard, long-released by its former master to live in the wilds of the Atlas region, must reevaluate its ambivalence toward human beings after stumbling upon a lost boy and his pet Skitty in the mountains. Where did such helpless creatures come from, and why are they here? And who in the darkness is so intent on bringing them back...? —Gameverse; worldbuilding slant.
1. Crying Kitten

a/n: Got bitten by the Pokémon bug again, which explains why all my recent stories are for that category. I've been wanting to write something that explores the odd relationships between humans and wild Pokémon, as well as between trained Pokémon and wild ones, while also delving into the strangeness of how/why/which specific elements of human (and inhuman) life and government structure might be different in a world where Pokémon training exists as an institution.

I know all that sounds incredibly vague, so just try and bear with me. Mostly this is a story about adorable kitty-cats, and a bunch of city dwellers trying to survive in the wilderness.

Please remember to **review** if you have any feelings about this story you'd like to share!

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_"Cruel Pokémon"_  
– Species classification for Liepard, National Pokédex #510

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She was nearly asleep in her den when she heard the first distant, mewling cries.

The Liepard's ears pricked. Her green eyes opened, pupils dilating rapidly in the darkness, and silently she lifted her head so as to intently listen for what she'd only half-heard outside her cave. The wind in the mountains blew softly that night, or else she never would have caught it at all: the carrying sounds of a child Pokémon, its voice piteous and weak in the far distance.

The noise was difficult to distinguish from the wind it traveled on, but the Liepard could tell at once that its owner had to be small, desperately frightened. That alone wouldn't have been sufficient cause to rouse her from her den—she knew Pokémon died often in the mountains, young and old, and plenty by her own teeth—but a sharp stab of familiarity in the sound gripped her attention. She knew these cries, she was certain of it. But from where?

It took her a moment, and then Liepard felt a rush of evocative memory: it had been buried so long within her as to be practically forgotten, but the mewling in the distance brought it back...

_There were two of the Purrloin kittens, infinitesimally small, a male and a female. They were not her littermates, but younger kin, hatched barely long enough for their eyes to have opened but already preening vainly by their reflections in the water. She watched, bemused, as the two made a game of outdoing one another's performances, neither ever directly acknowledging the other's existence but obviously aware of each other all the same. The competition went on until they both caught sight of her staring from the grass, and the two scampered over, meowing loudly. The sound was adorable for all its selfishness, and with a purring rumble she obliged them, knowing they desired to be taken back to Mother to be fed_...

The Liepard stiffened in her den, standing abruptly amid the collected reeds and feathers and walking over to the edge of the cave where she'd made her residence. The sound she could hear on the wind was the crying of a kitten, much like the ones she'd known before. Its cries were faint from such a distance, but she was certain it could be nothing else—or at least, nothing that lived here naturally. Meowth kittens, Shinx cubs, these Pokémon did not make sounds like a baby Purrloin. Similar, perhaps, but not the right pitch, the correct inflection...it had been a long time since she'd heard those cries but the Liepard hadn't forgotten.

Her mind raced. Not-quite-thoughts tumbled in uncertain agitation beneath her memories. The wailing tugged at her, reawakening the old compulsion she'd had to care for her younger kin. Wild Purrloin didn't live in these mountains. If there was a kitten of her species here, like her long-ago younger brothers and sisters from the wild, then that kitten would have been a trainer's Pokémon. There was every possibility that it had been taken by its trainer to a human data-box, and released, just as the Liepard herself had been. It might not understand.

The Liepard was strong. She had evolved on her own in the wild, had never depended fully on humans even as a captured Pokémon. She knew well enough how to survive on her own, and had been prepared to do so when the time unexpectedly arrived.

A kitten, however, would not know. And though the Liepard wasn't compassionate by nature, she also wasn't so detached as to abandon an infant of her own kind here in the wild mountains: not a small, helpless thing like her younger kin had been, a kitten she knew she could care for. She wasn't devoid of nurturing instinct.

She was not a human.

The Liepard listened for the cries a moment longer, hovering at the mouth of her shallow cave. Upon pinpointing the precise direction that they were coming from, she moved—an invisible blur of feather-light steps across the jagged earth, with nary a sound nor a flicker of motion to betray her presence.

Do not fear, she thought, willing the kitten to remain safe from predators until she arrived. Stop crying, little one.

I come.

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**Trainer Tips!**

Use your Pokédex or a search engine to find and listen to the audio of Skitty's cry. Then, check against Purrloin's for comparison.


	2. Kind Death, Death-Kind

a/n: I'm curious to know what you think of how I'm writing Liepard, as well other Pokémon once we get to them. Do they seem too human? Too animalistic? I'm trying to present them for the most part as being not quite sentient in the human sense of the word, but still more complex in their thoughts/feelings/methods of communication than domestic animals in the real world.

Anyway, please PLEASE review if you had anything you liked or didn't like about this chapter! Feedback is the reason we all keep going.

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_"Its tongue is made of gas. If licked, its victim starts shaking constantly until death eventually comes."_  
– Pokédex entry [1] for Haunter, National Pokédex #093

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The Liepard's search took her far below the cliffs, into the rolling slopes that graded sharply down toward the base of the nearby valley. The foliage was thicker here, with more green plants and tangled brambles beneath her paws, but there were also fewer trees above. As was her custom, she moved without a sound, letting her ears tune fully toward the feeble cries as they drew near. She was not halfway down when she finally pinpointed the source of the piteous mewling. Already, the sounds had begun tapering off from keening wails into smaller whimpers, defeated and utterly miserable.

The Liepard's eyes widened when she caught sight of her quarry. She stopped abruptly, at a far enough distance not to be seen, taking in her discovery at a distance from the cover of the brush. The small Pokémon that lay on the hill below was indeed a kitten, as she'd guessed; however, it was not a Purrloin. Nor, to her shock, was it abandoned—at least, not by its trainer.

There were two of the small things huddled together, differing species, both male. They were obviously young and lost by the way they shivered helplessly in the mountain air. One, the crying kitten, came as no great surprise to the Liepard, though she didn't recognize what species of Pokémon it was. The kitten was squat in build, far rounder than a Purrloin would be at its age, and it had short and fine fur that looked ill-suited for trapping in any heat. Its fur was brightly colored, split in swathes of solid pink and cream. In that respect it reminded the Liepard of some insect Pokémon she'd seen before, battling alongside her trainer before he released her into the wild. She supposed that the kitten's coloring must be adapted, as the insects' had been, for blending in among fields of flowers. But against the dense vegetation in the mountains, the small Pokémon stood out like a spark of fire.

For all that, what truly surprised the Liepard was not the kitten, but its companion: a human child, not yet near the age where it could fend for itself. The small thing was curled up and shivering in silence, beside the mewling Pokémon in a shallow dip in the hill. The Liepard stared dumbly at it for a long moment, too stunned to do anything else. Humans did not live in the wild of these mountains. They did not even travel here.

But it _was_ a human child. There was no mistaking it. Pulse racing beneath her fur, the Liepard crept closer to get a better look, gripped by curiosity as strong as thirst. It had been so long, since she had last seen a human...

She saw first that the child was dully colored, mostly in comparison to the kitten curled up beside it. It had brown skin, and wore mottled green fabric to cover most of its upper body, with thin denim hanging loosely off the legs. The human looked oddly skinny for its height, though it was difficult for her to determine any real shape beneath the clothes it wore. Like the kitten, the human was obviously young, and the Liepard caught a glint of water on its face as though it had been crying (in the odd manner of humans, when they cried). But unlike the kitten, the little human wasn't making any sounds.

It didn't seem to the Liepard that this was normal. Hazy memories of humans she'd known, and their young, flickered through her mind's eye. Her former master hadn't fathered any children of his own, but the Liepard did recall several small daughters of his sister's, whom he'd called 'nieces.' Those females had been children older than the male before her now, though barely, and they had cried like Purrloin kittens when they were upset: loudly, and with intent of getting pity or attention from adults. Shouldn't this human be doing that? It couldn't have come here alone, surely _someone_ had to be looking for it—that would explain why the kitten had been crying so loudly for help, and for so long, despite the threat of predators. Though the idea of other, unknown humans in these mountains was as bewildering to the Liepard as seeing a child of theirs out here alone, but if one was possible, so must be the other.

The kitten mewled again, loudly, reminding the Liepard of what dangers the wilderness could bring if she waited here in stillness any longer. She had a decision to make. She could leave the kitten and the human as they were, to be found by unknown benefactors; or, more likely, to die slowly or violently in the mountains. She could also intervene on their behalf.

The second choice was the better of the two, but it was also messy and unpleasant. Snapping the human's neck with her jaws might be an expenditure of energy she'd regret, especially if other predators had already been drawn in by the sounds of Pokémon crying. But she'd have to do it, if she wanted to take the kitten with her. A dozen lunar cycles ago, the thought of killing a human would have horrified her, but the Liepard had been a trainer's Pokémon then. Things were different in the wild, and any learned compassion and responsibility she'd had toward her trainer's kind had faded with the passage of time. Killing in the world of humans was a matter of right and wrong, a luxury. Here, in the wilderness, it was only a facet of reality like the sun or the rain.

But if the kitten had imprinted on its human past the point of domestication, then the Liepard would have little recourse but to kill them both. The kitten would grieve, and refuse to learn what she tried to teach it. The Liepard considered that she could take the kitten quickly and simply leave the child, but even leaving a human so young, to die alone and frightened, would be far worse an act than merely letting it and the kitten die together.

The thought of saving both of them did not occur to her. A kitten the Liepard would gladly care for, but she had no compulsion, let alone obligation, to do the same for a human. Giving the child a quick and painless death was a far greater mercy than most predators in the mountains would have considered—and perhaps it was an old stirring of loyalty for her former master driving her actions, but the Liepard had no wish to let the small human suffer needlessly until it died.

She would kill it, then, even if she didn't enjoy it. And it would be better than doing nothing.

The Liepard crouched low, planning her attack by instinct and memory faster than her mind consciously thought. _Lunge, race, make no sound. Powerful jaws, snapping once around the human's throat, severing the spinal cord—drop him in the next motion, scooping up the kitten with gentle teeth. Return to the cliffs. To safety. _In that moment, her world was reduced to a moment of focused preparation, absolute and sharp. The pupils of her dark eyes were blown wide with concentration, haunches coiled, fur bristling—a second more, and she would strike. Nothing could stop the Liepard once she began to move.

But then, something rippled in the air below. The Liepard blinked, her trance broken. The strange ripple flickered and very nearly disappeared, though now that she'd seen it once, she couldn't miss it again.

Her mind raced disjointedly, to pin down the strange distortion. She needed to figure out what it was, in case it turned out to be dangerous. That was always the first necessary course of action when confronted with unknown entities in the wild. Watch. Wait. Learn.

The unknown ripple looked almost like a shadow in the air—just a dark spot, hovering above the human child and the kitten where they lay huddled on the hill. Was it a mirage? A light-trick, like a Pokémon would use in battles? Only trainers' Pokémon attacked like that, however. They fought to win battles one-on-one, or to show off, not to conquer prey that would then be eaten. What Pokémon in the mountains would ever...

The Liepard concentrated again, this time focusing her eyes differently. Something inside her knew what this anomaly was, and how to look for it, _at_ it. Feral instinct overrode her conscious decision-making. The odd, shimmering spot held itself the same place in the air as she blinked at it hard, once, twice—then, the spell was broken, and suddenly she could see the Haunter for what it was. The Liepard stiffened in place, feeling her adrenaline spike with sudden horror.

A Pokémon. A death-kind. A Haunter. Her enemy.

It was feeding.

The Liepard acted out of instinct, and this time, it was not one born of compassion. With a wild scream she tore out from the cover of the brushes, lunging with blackness gathered in her teeth and claws so that she might rend the Haunter's gaseous body to pieces before it licked the human boy again. If she didn't stop it, the death-kind would drain him, utterly dead. Without even a spirit to leave behind.

Caught by surprise, the Haunter had no time at all to move before she was upon it. When her claws slashed out, the death-kind thrashed to free itself, screeching in a way that made the Liepard's fur stand on end. But she refused to let it escape.

Behind her, the kitten gave a squeaking, frightened noise that might have had a meaning in it—_Big Sister?_—but the Liepard paid it no mind, focused purely on the task at hand. The death-kind had to be destroyed. Not killed, obliterated. The dead must die.

The struggle was brief: with a final black slash, the Liepard caught the Haunter in a critical hit and extinguished its life force for good. The blackness in her claws tore the wretched Pokémon into empty streaks of light, no more substantial than the air between her paws. It was gone.

She was victorious.

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**Trainer Tips!**

Wild Haunter are relatively rare and may be encountered in man-made places associated strongly with death, such as Pokémon Tower in Kanto and Sinnoh's Old Chateau, as well as in underground caves and tunnels like Kalos's Victory Road and Lost Cavern in the Sevii Islands. However, unlike many other species of ghost-type Pokémon (Misdreavus, Shuppet/Banette, Duskull, Drifblim, etc.), wild Haunter are not currently known to reside in any mountainous areas.

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**REFERENCES**

[1] "HAUNTER." _Pokémon Silver Version. _2000: 093._  
_


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